Bridgeport ponders the chicken and the egg

Updated 11:30 pm, Friday, March 28, 2014

Sue Blagys lets out the chickens she owns at her home in Bridgeport, Conn. on Wednesday March 26, 2014. Blagys spent about a year and a half getting permission from the city to have chickens in her backyard, and have had them for three years now. It's one of the rare households that actually obtained permission from the city's health dept to set up the coops. less

Sue Blagys lets out the chickens she owns at her home in Bridgeport, Conn. on Wednesday March 26, 2014. Blagys spent about a year and a half getting permission from the city to have chickens in her backyard, ... more

Sue Blagys shows off the chickens she owns at her home in Bridgeport, Conn. on Wednesday March 26, 2014. Blagys spent about a year and a half getting permission from the city to have chickens in her backyard, and have had them for three years now. It's one of the rare households that actually obtained permission from the city's health dept to set up the coops. less

Sue Blagys shows off the chickens she owns at her home in Bridgeport, Conn. on Wednesday March 26, 2014. Blagys spent about a year and a half getting permission from the city to have chickens in her backyard, ... more

"So these are our girls," said the proud owner, who with her family has been raising the hens for three years behind their historic home in the city's picturesque Black Rock neighborhood.

Across town, on a street lined with multi-family homes, the cries of a rooster -- illegal in the city -- lead to one small, fenced-in backyard in particular that has been turned over to several birds.

"It doesn't bother me," said Norma Chambers, who lives within earshot of the house, where at least two roosters were engaged in a cock-a-doodle-doo match this particular afternoon. "I come from the islands (Jamaica). It don't bother me at all."

The city won't solve the "which came first" debate over chickens and eggs. But when it comes to poultry and rules legalizing it, the birds got here first, and now Bridgeport's trying to figure out what to do about them.

The City Council is debating a proposal by Mayor Bill Finch allowing residents who meet a variety of criteria involving the size and location of the coop, food storage and waste disposal -- and who also attend a city-sponsored chicken-tending course -- to raise up to six hens for their eggs.

Finch sees it as a way of encouraging more people to raise their own food.

But at least one council member -- Lydia Martinez, D-137, whose immigrant constituents sometimes keep concealed coops -- is struggling with whether the new policy will hurt those households by forcing them into the open.

"One way or the other, we're going to have people unhappy," Martinez said.

Warren Blunt, the city's chief of environmental health who helped draft the newer, more detailed rules, was not aware of any households that had taken advantage of that option.

Luckily, Sue Blagys and her husband, Phil, kept an email they received on Sept. 21, 2010, from then-Health Director William Quinn, granting them permission after a year-long application process to raise chickens.

"Good luck," wrote Quinn.

Blagys, a visiting nurse, joked that the decision was part of a mid-life crisis.

"I didn't want to have an affair. I didn't want a sports car. I wanted chickens," she said.

The Blagys family has owned the home for 101 years, and Sue assumed prior generations kept chickens.

She researched the topic and also took a course in Bethany.

The 8-foot by 20-foot backyard coop was built atop a solid rock foundation to keep predators from burrowing beneath the wire. Tarps are hung in the winter to keep snow out.

At dusk, the hens march up a ramp to an enclosure to sleep.

The small flock eats pellets, meal worms and family leftovers -- even the remains of a scallop dinner. The Blagys' collect and donate the bird feces to people who compost it for garden fertilizer.

Without roosters, there is little noise; just some soft clucking.

If you want chicks, you need a rooster. Otherwise you get unfertilized, edible eggs and a quiet coop.

"Nobody knows they're here," she added, other than neighbors who happily baby sit when the family goes away so they can be compensated with fresh eggs.

Councilman Richard Paoletto, D-138, whose Ordinance Committee last week began reviewing Finch's poultry policy, said anyone who has proof they legally own chickens under the existing law will likely be "grandfathered in."

Everyone else must apply to the Health Department for a permit, he said, even if Finch's proposal doesn't pass.

Martinez, whose East Side neighbor at one point owned a rooster, said as a Puerto Rican she is accustomed to living around chickens. She and friends know of Portuguese and Chinese immigrants raising them as well.

"It's not one culture," she said.

Martinez acknowledged the city must do something about the birds, but is not sure Finch's proposal is the answer.

"Restrictions sometimes get to be too tough on people," Martinez said. "I don't want to burden (people) with too many regulations they cannot follow."